[UPDATED] Whyte 2011 commuter bikes!

Whyte bikes will be launching their 2011 range to the press in the first week of July and to the publich at BikeRadar live on the 10th-11th of July.

Something of a departure for Whyte is the announcement of a new range of urban/commuter bikes. We expect full details of the Whyte 2011 range soon, including all the new urban/commuter models.

In the meantime, we'll have to make do with this teaser shot of one of their new commuter bikes - the Portobello.

UPDATE:

Keith at Max Bikes PR has sent over some more info on the Whyte 2011 commuter bikes. Skip to the bottom for pics!

We have details on two fast urban commuters in the range, the Portobello and the Montpellier. We've got not details on price or construction of the final bikes but it looks to be a pretty simple alloy frame with the higher specced Montpellier getting what appears to be a Carbon fork.

The final range looks as if it's going to cover a wide price point with the Portobello looking to have some Shimano Sora components, the Montpellier taking things to the extremes of a SRAM XX group!

Both bikes are hydro disc brake equipped, the more wallet friendly Portobello featuring a wide riser bar, the Montpellier getting a more agressive narrow flat bar. Wheels look to Whyte branded items with deep section rims. Apparently a nod to the fixie trend but we feel it looks a touch at odds with the very sleek grey and modern look of the frame - at least on the Portobello with it's white rims, the black items on the Montpellier look pretty smart.

Here's a word from ATB Product Director Andy Jeffries:

"About 4 years ago, Kevin Izzard (the Wilier and Mezzo Product Manager at ATB) asked me if he could have a Whyte 19 Team frame to build into a Winter commuter bike, we had a left over sample from the R & D department so I was more than happy for him to do something creative with it. This frame was back in the day when we used to have a "Race" frame made from a pretty fancy AN6 Mag enhanced 6000 series alloy with bonded in carbon seat stays (this bike won the Trans Scotland solo MTB event that year), Kev fitted a Pace rigid carbon fork and slick tyres, pretty soon he decided to fit 700c wheels with disks, this required us to build wheels as there were no wheelsets around with 135mm rear spacing and disk hubs. As the frame had a lot of mud clearance there was enough room to fit a 700c rear wheel. The bike got fully pimped up with XTR Duel Control and mega light parts and so it stayed that way for a while.

The next major stage came when SRAM introduced the XX group, whilst myself and Ian attended a OEM Product Camp is Spain a conversation at Dinner came round to the compatibility of 10 Speed MTB compatibility with 10 Speed Road, it turned out that the cable pull on the MTB shifters was the same as the Road, unlike Shimano. So the "Pimp up" had another level, SRAM Red cranks, rear and front mecs with XX Disk brakes and Match maker shifters, Nice.......... this all worked pretty well but it was time to really deal with the geometry, we had a BB height that was designed for an MTB and the overall geometry was not perfect, we liked the shorter stem and slacker angles of the MTB frame but it needed tweaking, we also wanted to use a BB-30 Red crank to save weight and add stiffness.

Stage 3 was to make a sample frame with the above features added, this arrived and in the meantime I had solved our wheelset spec, Hope made us a Pro 3 wheelset with a 130mm rear wheel and the 3 bolt spider, to go with this they also made a set of Match maker X-2 brakes, very, very pimp! So there we had Ian's commuter bike a fully sorted 16lb bike...... but crazy expensive £3000ish and clearly only commercial in very small quantities, so last Winter we looked at how to make 3 specs with similar core design values but at an affordable price, the results were the R-7 line, core qualities were kept, Road Compact gearing, Hydraulic Disk Brakes, the slacker stable geometry than a flat bar Road Bike.

We did make some more improvements to the production frames, we added a semi integrated head tube, a new custom rear dropout to mount the disk brake on the chainstay, this is also Post mount to make the installation compact and bracket free, it also allows the easy fitting of racks and mud guards, a must on a true commuter. Luckily for Whyte, SRAM introduced MTB and 10 speed down to X-7 and the new APEX group just in time for us (or maybe we had some advanced indications, who you know etc ;O), so there we have the range, the Portobello, Cambridge and Stirling and of course, the Montpellier the name of Ian's original bike, this is in fact the name of his favourite bar in Cheltenham!"

Whyte Montpellier 2011